An honest look at how Intel Finalists get there

Parents Forum
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<p>This might be related - or not. Years ago I took a Chinese brush painting course and was very surprised to learn that you practice by copying the works of masters. The whole thing is more rigid than western style painting - you paint the "four gentlemen" (bamboo, chrysthanthemums, iris and plum) and are instructed how it should look (every line has a beginning and an end, for example; bamboo 'joints' get longer the further up the page you go). No one in the western tradition would learn to paint by copying the masters - that's only done for cheap home decorations or forgery. </p>

<p>How do you address cultural differences towards cheating (or anything)? I think you start by trying to understand them.</p>

302

<p>At the heart of this matter is a basic deception, both OF and BY students, their parents, mentors, and other often well-intentioned adults. Due to the ever more intense competition for scholarships and admission to elite colleges and universities, along the way we have abandoned the understanding that the horse must go before the cart. Many have come to accept without question that a high school student beginning his research project at the age of 15 or 16--perhaps before having even taken a single AP class at school--is capable of devising and carrying out a complex and often highly specialized project in which he works as an equal alongside professors and post-grad students. Thus, first we must question whether college education, graduate school degrees, and years of expert work in a field of research come so cheaply that a youngster may achieve similarly outstanding results after a mere two or three summers (ie. 5-8 months) of training (remember they must begin with basic training in lab equipment usage), preparatory study, and lab work? Oh yes, we could of course factor in the time spent during the academic year. But wouldn't that have to be snippets of leftover time scraped together after the school day and sports practices are over (lots of Intel kids seem to run track), homework is completed, the musical instrument has been practiced (with the discipline incumbent upon membership in a professional/high level music group like the city orchestra as per Intel bios.), and various math and science Olympiad contests have been prepared for? (aren't Intel kids usually participants?)</p>

<p>On Back to School night at our HS, the AP Biology teacher glowed as she exclaimed to the parents that this was her brightest class ever. Indeed, several students had already worked in DNA research. At first, I felt intimadated on my son's behalf, as his only prior experience in biology had been the pre-requisite high school intro. course. But then I considered how absurd it was that a student who had not even taken an advanced HIGH SCHOOL school biology class should actually be doing DNA research? And who would be fool enough to humor them?</p>

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<p>TheGFG --
If your first sentence relates to the topic of this thread - Intel/STS competition - then your opening statement about deception shows you did not read Jenskate's recent posts. Have you ever attended the public sessions for finalists in Washington? Have you met any of the 300 semi-finalists, and discussed their mentored research projects with them? Or their other science and academic pursuits? Intel/STS may not reward THE 40brightest science talents in America -- but they reward 40 of the brightest science talents in America. </p>

<p>If the language used in Intel and Science Services PR for the competition bothers some, well... PR is PR. Colleges have been accepting and rejecting (yes..rejecting!) STS partipants for years. Ad coms, and professors who review the research as part of the application process, know what's real and what's fluff.</p>

<p>Are there a handful of the 300 Intel/STS Semi-finalists each year who go beyond the standard academic practices of research? Possibly, yes. But very valid relationships between a students and teachers in a research setting have been twisted into deceptive relationships on this thread. Please consider research standards each time a claim is made that students who don't recognize the significance of their discovery haven't fulfilled the rigor of research to be considered a "science talent" </p>

<p>There is a recurring sentiment on this thread that the standard academic practice of mentors/professors guiding students is somehow deceptive. And that students using "connections" or "advantages" of - geography, parents friends, the "luck" of attending a HS with a research program - is cheating. I clearly disagree.</p>

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<p>For the IB program the extended essay is a prerequisite for the diploma. The students can do the essay in virtually any domain, and I have spoken with many kids over the years about how this has gone when the have selected science-based essays. Invariably, they are held up by logistical and essentially mechanical problems, having always selected a range of topic and content appropriate for what they actually know-- the school doesn't have access to university level/research type labs, nor are there labs in the area. Their teachers are mostly PhD level, some with research experience but now all teaching. These sorts of science lessons are valid experiences for HS kids-- learning that sometimes you are out of luck when the planning or the materials or an anomaly let you down. None expect great discoveries, all expect to learn about the scientific process. One boy, who ultimately had to write his essay on why he couldn't get his equipment to work (!) is now getting a PhD in Chemistry at Harvard. All the kids I have known of who have done science EE's have all gone on to major in science or engineering in college....</p>

<p>Not only is it disgenuous for kids who do not have sufficient background to aim for 'discoveries' in science, it is yet another example of the fine-tuning of such perfect young people that when the inevitable mis-haps take place, they may be ill prepared for the whole thing. </p>

<p>I love reading about these kids, but honestly unless they have 50 hours in a day I find it hard to understand how they acheive all they do, and why we have come to feel like childhood has to be a race.</p>

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<p>"No one in the western tradition would learn to paint by copying the masters - that's only done for cheap home decorations or forgery." </p>

<p>Actually, in fine arts programs the students are taught to copy the masters as a means of learning their techniques. Same for music. Of course, it is a learning process that is started with the expectation that the student's artistry or musicality will take off and his own creativity will bloom.</p>

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<p>2boysima,
I would like to make a fine distinction between deception and cheating. Deception as I meant it above implies a state of being misled, misguided or confused. It's a truism, but a deceived individual doesn't realize he is deceived. He may or may not bear some responsibility for allowing the deception to take hold in his mind as a result of some character flaw such as greed, envy or unbridled ambition. I believe the science teacher was deceived into thinking those young DNA researchers certainly possessed exceptional intelligence and scientific promise, or else how could this wonderful phenomenon be explained? The students, no doubt, were naive and only saw a wonderful chance to learn and participate in what is customarily an expert adult endeavor (and perhaps they or their parents considered how that would appear on their college applications.) They did not intend to deceive the teacher or adcoms or anyone else, but despite their limited knowledge and experience they and their parents (and countless others) bought into the idea that they really could do DNA "research" with only an introductory biology course under their belt.</p>

<p>I don't know the source of the deception exactly or where to place the blame, but I think the post above by anitaw touches on the societal underpinning behind the existence of this deception. I do not think the Intel students are cheaters. They are working very hard and following the rules as they have been set up. I do question the system. As I stated in an earlier post, judging from the bios some of these kids are clearly exceptional prodigies capable of advanced work. Others seemed to have projects that are reasonable for their age and experience. But there were definitely some that stretched the limits of credibility due to the level of specialization.</p>

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<p>"Thus, first we must question whether college education, graduate school degrees, and years of expert work in a field of research come so cheaply that a youngster may achieve similarly outstanding results after a mere two or three summers (ie. 5-8 months) of training..."</p>

<p>Excellent point, GFG</p>

308

<p>Jen--thank you for your description of your experience. You obviously worked very hard, and should be commended for that. I think your analogy of Neal building a house but not recognizing it because it was a new thing is pretty telling. It means he was not aiming for a house-type purpose, (or he would have realized its use after he finished it), and thus the thing he built was serendipitous, rather than meaningful, as least from his point of view. Which is how it sounded in the article. I am very sure he learned a lot from his experience, though.</p>

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<p>like everything else it is different than in the 70s, when these winners were by and large truly brilliant people who did much of the project on their own --sans "mentor." It is still a great accomplishment and fantastic activity, and I am sure colleges do not take this for the sign of true brilliance, on its own merit, that it once seemed to be --although some participants may still be brilliant, their talent may or may not get the spotlight it deserves in this activity.</p>

<p>It is still a great thing to do for those who are motivated --and appears to be viewed in the right context, today, based on these posts. College admissions officers are going to see this for the excellent activity it is, but not necessarily the sign of genius it used to be.</p>

<p>The world is always changing and I for one think it is great that so many more high school students can be involved in this kind of experience. I do not think it is a scam because there is no secrecy surrounding it and everyone seems to see it exactly for what it is.</p>

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<p>I think the appropriate analogy for the "Neal" story is that he solved a particular living-space problem by designing a particular kind of house, but he had to be told that no one had designed that sort of house before. He knew that he had solved the problem; he needed context to understand the relative importance of his solution. </p>

<p>And, of course, that context is part of what years of undergraduate and graduate training, and a professional apprenticeship, provides. But the fact that he didn't have the context, and that someone had to give him basic background in Yau-Calabi strings before he could work on the problem, doesn't mean that his solution wasn't creative and impressive.</p>

<p>This remains a really interesting thread. It reminds me that the "Westinghouse" competition dates from an era when essentially amateur research was still fairly common. The tools available to researchers today are massively more impressive, and massively more expensive and sophisticated, than in the past, and a lot of research mainly consists of figuring out how to apply newly available technology to a particular problem, and then documenting it. The likelihood of an amateur tinkerer coming up with a real scientific advance in his or her basement is pretty limited. </p>

<p>I've been defending these kids, but I think we're all a little disturbed by the stuff in that article, and we recognize elements of "unfairness" in a process that seems ultimately to depend on very unevenly-distributed access to sophisticated labs and mentors. But, what is the purpose of the competition? Is it to provide a fair, egalitarian test of skill in which only a kid's "natural" advantages will be relevant -- something like a 100-meter dash, run under simple, idealized, controlled conditions, with lots of fairness rules? (And, of course, coaching and training -- and maybe steroids -- can make a huge difference there.) Or is it to build a structure in which kids with an interest in science get drawn into real scientific culture, as it exists in the real world, and the ones who negotiate it best (taking into account a whole bunch of factors) get recognized? The Intel Competition (and the Tchaikovsky Competition, and probably lots of others) has elements of both, and ultimately those elements are not completely reconcilable. But so what? A sports-like competition would be much less interesting and less valuable, even if it were much more fair, at least in theory. A purely practical competition would be . . . life. There's plenty of THAT competition, and it's hard to give any prizes to 17-year-olds.</p>

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<p>The sports like competition exists - it's called Science Olympiad. It's hugely fun, also suffers from some of the same things that school sports does - schools that actually make it a class, who throw huge amounts of money at it etc. I see the Intel work as different, but equally valuable. If nothing else by getting high school kid in the lab sooner - they can judge better whether they are really cut out for serious scientific research. I'll never forget a good friend of mine in college who didn't discover until the summer before her senior year that she hated archeology field research.</p>

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<p>One point I'd like to make, is that the science kits that you get as a kid today are vastly different from the ones from days of yore (1960s or so and 1970s). Back then you got real chemicals in your chemistry sets and you were dealing with real reactions and other such things, but now the "chemistry sets" are making sugar rocks and watching blue and yellow dye to make green.</p>

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<p>TheGFG: Well, you can choose not to believe that a 15 or 16 year old, prior to taking AP Bio, can understand laboratory research, but my son was such a kid. He began in 9th grade, reading on his own, and then spent many hours reading studies in the area of cardio-vascular research. He would also meet individually with the AP Bio teacher and his mentor to fill in the gaps in his understanding. By the time he actually undertook his first project in the summer after sophomore year, he could discuss his work with a fair amount of sophistication. (His research teacher at the high school wrote all about this in his college recommendation). </p>

<p>Now, after one year of college, my son is working at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard, dong DNA research. He is the first undergrad they have taken in over ten years, and he is having an amazing experience.</p>

<p>Don't ask me how, but believe me, my son is not alone; the kids who succeed at the highest levels in math and science are just like this. And like my son, they do many other things during high school as well, including music, sports, debate and the like. They just get very little sleep.</p>

<p>Another example: my son became good friends with another Intel finalist who did research at Sloan Kettering most days after school. Not only did she do DNA or similar research, she herself cracked some code of a protein, beating out other researchers were working on this same thing. After she competed in the finals of Seimens and Intel, she traveled to far flung places to present her work. In addition, she was valedictorian of a class of over 800, and she was also a rythmic gymnast. And, to top it off, she came to this country at the age of 8, speaking no English.</p>

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<p>Donemom,
Congrats to your son. He clearly falls into that category of exceptionally driven and capable kids, which I twice acknowledged do indeed exist.</p>

<p>Perhaps you can assist us in understanding the actual progression of acquiring access to such a research opportunity. How did your son get connected with his mentor? Does your high school have a special relationship with a university, lab, or medical school? How was his mentor able to convince a research facility to provide equipment, supplies, patient records, manpower, and other needed resources to a teenager to do research, no matter how knowledgeable? Where did the funding for this come from? In other words, are you saying that if student X were as exceptional a high school sophomore as your son, he could walk into a medical school on his own and successfully convince a professor there that he should be allowed to conduct cardiovascular research?</p>

<p>My dog can talk. If I ask him what's the top of a house called, he says "roof!"</p>

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<p>First of all, my son's project was done on rats, so no patient records were involved. He worked in the physiology dept. of a local medical school. I had explained how he got connected with his mentor in post #234. This mentor is the head of his lab, very very well known in his field, and had students both before and since my son, which I think were funded through grants.</p>

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<p>With regards to a point made regarding discussions, I can tell, with enough motivation, I could memorize and understand anything- anybody's notes, read a book, memorize whatever</p>

<p>And when professors, scientist do the "explaining" and "showing" and 'teaching" one wonders- such as, look for anything that is different, look for this kind of sequence, look for this kind of result....leading in questioning, etc is very easy to do...anyone who ever answered a survey knows that</p>

<p>There is enough wondering among those paying attention to raise serious questions about the "fairness" of this competition, the $$ behind it, the resources available to just a few, and the mentoring involved and the benefits to those mentors</p>

<p>You will have the amazing ones, but i would be willing to bet that you have some medicore ones that got ahed by connections, equipment and the prestige that is awarded to the mentors</p>

<p>I remember back in the day when there was an Olympic team that was just amazing, breaking records, fit beyond belief, and people were astounded, it was presented as superior training, fascilites, taking children at young ages and training for years, alas, that was not the case, if people hadn't looked deeper, we never would have known</p>

<p>If you have just a few competitors at Intel that get through with "coaching" beyond what should be acceptable, etc. then the program needs to be looked at carefully</p>

<p>They taint the accomplishments of others</p>

<p>If you put my D in a lab, and trained her correctly, though science is not her forte', she could regurgitate quite a bit as well</p>

<p>In this day and age of plagerism, steroids, cheating, etc., when you have suddenly a whole group of children making scientific breakthroughs that trained scientist themselves did not discover for years, kind of makes one wonder</p>

<p>And if they have done nothing wrong and have honestly worker hard and earned it, there should be no worrying</p>

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<p>Yes, spending the summer interning for Harer Huang, MD; Zipping Wang, MS;
Erin Walsh, MS; Akos Koller, MD, PhD; Thomas H. Hintze, PhD and assisting on research supported by multiple NIH (National Institutes of Health) grants does not hurt.</p>

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<p>"...they do many other things during high school as well, including music, sports, debate and the like. They just get very little sleep."
"Not only did she do DNA or similar research, she herself cracked some code of a protein, beating out other researchers were working on this same thing."</p>

<p>Wow. These kids are so exceptional that even when they are sleep-deprived, their work surpasses that of better educated and more experienced researchers. Could it be that their lack of formal training combined with the state of being only half awake produces an ability to think outside the box? If these students are so brilliant and successful in this "natural state", so to speak, then I must in all seriousness ask this question: why would they bother going to college at all? </p>

<p>The topic of sleep-deprivation among our high achieving high schoolers should perhaps be fodder for a new thread.</p>

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<p>Getting mentors for high school research is really just like getting an internship. Often lots of legwork, lots of letters, some sign that you've got an interest in what the mentor is doing...and..like an internship...it doesn't hurt if you have connections (say...your mother's former roommate is a professor at Cal Tech.)</p>

<p>However, for a student without the connections, finding a mentor may be time consuming, but it's not difficult.</p>

<p>The Psychology department at NYU actively seeks high school students interested in doing research for Intel/STS:
<a href="http://psych.nyu.edu/research/highschool.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://psych.nyu.edu/research/highschool.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The NIH offers research internships for HS students:
<a href="http://www.training.nih.gov/student/sip/index.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.training.nih.gov/student/sip/index.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Indiana Univeristy Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research Summer Internship Program offers high school, graduate, undergraduate, and medical students the opportunity to perform research in nationally recognized research laboratories.
<a href="http://www.medicine.iu.edu/research/students/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.medicine.iu.edu/research/students/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>RSI is a program for students between their junior and senior year of HS, that provides them with research opportunities at MIT (for free!...but there's a rigorous application process.)</p>

<p>Jennskate in post 294 describes in great detail how she connected with mentors for 2 different summers.</p>

<p>If you google "Research Programs for High School Students" you'll find a lot more.</p>

<p>If access to one of these institutions is difficult, that's not really a problem, either. If you read the titles of some of the Intel semi-finalist and finalist papers, you'll find that some of them did projects that didn't need to be done in a lab. There are a number of finalists...especially in social science and math..who work with their mentors through e-mail and phone.</p>

<p>Why should a mentor...or an institution...waste their time and resources on yet another inquisitive and bright young person who will provide them with free labor? Aside from wording that rhetorical question so the answer is obvious....some of the reasons are the same as why some people go into an academic profession -- they like having people ask them questions. They like being able to provide answers, or the guidance to find answers. And...these professors and institutions like the PR value of being associated with Intel/STS winners.</p>

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<p>Some posters seem to suggest that having a mentor makes the work of the Intel finalists somehow fraudulent. When writing their Ph.D. dissertation, grad students have mentors: they're called thesis advisors. Anyone reading an academic monograph will see a long list of people who are thanked in the acknowledgments. But the work itself is the author's own. Once a dissertation is completed, there is a process called the thesis defense. In some cases, it is a real conversation about the work; in others it is merely a device to ascertain that the thesis was truly written by the grad student and not the work of someone else. I am assuming that in the case of the Intel competition, there is a similar process that helps ascertain how much help a competitor has had.</p>

<p>I cannot comment on what goes on in a science lab, but for math, I can safely say that just being shown or even explained some math concept is not enough. If it were, I would have gotten a Field medal by now. Five minutes later, I could not even regurgitate what I was told because it is well over my head. </p>

<p>Neal Wadhwa is at Harvard now (no doubt attracted by the presence on the faculty of Shing Tong Yau of the Calabi-Yau manifold), and every bit as impressive as he is made out to be. So says my S.</p>